Using a Heat Gun to Remove Wallpaper

A Heat Gun, Who Knew!?!

Of the many things we’ve experimented with, this one turned out to actually work… removing wallpaper with a heat gun!

Just to recap, here is a pic of the master bathroom from when we moved in:

It was very beautifully done (I’m not being sarcastic) in that all the blue tiles matched the blue toilet and the blue stripes in the wallpaper background… it just wasn’t David’s and my taste.

After procrastinating and taking down wallpaper for what seems like the past 7 months straight, we decided to tackle this room. Part of David’s attempt to earlier this winter was using a heat gun to literally heat the copper pipes. While he was researching that online, he found out you can use a heat gun to remove wallpaper, too!
We decided to give it a go, and it worked!

My tips for removing wallpaper with a heat gun:

Don’t use anything other than the heat gun and a paint scraper/ wallpaper scraper. (Scoring won’t help, it will just make it worse.),

Hold the heat gun about 6″ away from the wallpaper and keep it constantly moving. Don’t let it sit too long over a piece of wallpaper or it might start to burn. (Learned this the hard way… but thankfully it just smoldered and didn’t catch on fire!)

After about 15 seconds of heat, start slooooowly pulling the wallpaper away while continuing to heat up the area you’re about to pull.

Take your time. If you rush and the wallpaper isn’t heated (and the glue isn’t melted), you’ll just rip it and then it’s like peeling a sticker… frustrating and manicure-ruining.

This goes for every kind of wallpaper removal, but have a trash bag handy so you can put the wallpaper straight into the trash rather than letting it fall on the floor or attempting to make a pile. It makes clean-up SO much more bearable!

Ventilate the room… don’t know what’s melting in that wallpaper glue but I certainly don’t want to be breathing it in!

Try to take pleasure in the process! It’s much easier to clean up that wet patches of scored wallpaper you’d otherwise be removing.